UC approves 8 percent tuition hike

SAN FRANCISCO -- University of California leaders on Thursday approved an 8 percent tuition hike that will cost each student up to $823 next year.

Five of the 20 regents voted against the measure during the meeting at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay campus.

Several regents repeated a mantra that has become common in recent years: They have no choice but to raise tuition. The 2011 hike will bring undergraduate tuition to $11,124 per year starting next fall.

The 10-campus UC system, with more than 220,000 students, needs about $1 billion more per year to sustain itself, said Vice President Patrick Lenz, who added that the gap will rise to nearly $5 billion by 2020 unless the university takes drastic measures.

Lenz based that sobering picture on theoretical projections calling for annual 7 percent tuition hikes and 5 percent more funding per year from the state, which is facing a $20 billion deficit of its own.

If the annual tuition hikes and state funding don't materialize, the university system's budget picture will only worsen.

The state's budget problems have forced UC to seek more money from students, some system leaders said. Regent Norman Pattiz contrasted the university's action with California State University's 15 percent tuition increase, approved last week.

"For years, the University of California kept fees flat and low because we were in a position to do so," Pattiz said. "One only has to look at what the CSU just did to know there were more draconian actions we could have taken."

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The tuition increase will be offset by corresponding financial aid improvements that will essentially keep costs at this year's level for students with family incomes of less than $120,000 -- about 55 percent of the undergraduate student body. Only students whose families make $180,000 or more will pay the full increase.

In a shift from the raucous first day of the meeting Wednesday, when 13 protesters were arrested after they tried to push past a police line, only a handful of students showed up Thursday. Also in attendance was Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, a member of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education.

Calling the tuition increase a "gratuitously provocative gesture," Fong asked regents to postpone the measure until alternatives had been explored. Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, a UC regent, voted against the increase, comparing the decision to his Senate votes to raise taxes, which lost him Republican support in his unsuccessful run to retain his seat in this month's election.

"The question is pretty simple: Have we exhausted everything before raising fees on students?" Maldonado said.

Regents, who last year raised tuition 32 percent, appeared ready to consider a policy that would make future increases more predictable. California higher-education leaders have resisted that move in the past because of disagreements over how to craft the policy.

It would be smart for the university to find a way to avoid major tuition hikes, said Steve Boilard, higher-education chief for the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office. But such a fix will only work if the state can provide more budget stability, he said.

"There ought to be a fee policy," Boilard said after the meeting. "But a fee policy has to take into consideration what's coming from the state."

Student leaders, regents and administrators all called Thursday for a permanent solution to the university's budget woes. The problem is going to continue indefinitely otherwise, UC San Francisco graduate student Alfredo Mireles said.

"Students do not see this as a one-year problem," said Mireles, who will become a regent in July. "We see it as part of a broader problem."

One large piece of that problem is the university's pension plan, which went 20 years without contributions from UC and its employees and has up to $20 billion less than it needs to pay benefits. University leaders plan to overhaul the retirement plan by 2013, but making up for the pension's shortfall will cost the system hundreds of millions per year.

UC's irresponsibility led to the tuition and pension problems, said Regent Charlene Zettel, who opposed the fee hike.

"We should have been raising fees all along in a responsible manner," she said. "We should have been collecting contributions (to the pension fund) all along in a responsible manner."

Without higher tuition, there would be no way for the university to retain and hire top professors, UC President Mark Yudof said.

"It's worth what you pay here," he told reporters after the meeting. "And it's worth it if someday you need an artificial retina, because our people are working on it."